


More Than Skin Deep

by Sineala



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Adventures (Comics), Marvel Adventures: Avengers
Genre: Cap_Ironman Bingo, Community: cap_ironman, Fluff, M/M, Pining, Skrull(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-05 23:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13398330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/pseuds/Sineala
Summary: Tony can just about accept the fact that he and Steve were kidnapped and replaced by Skrulls for three months. But what he can't figure out is why none of the Avengers noticed. And what he really can't figure out is why none of their teammates will tell them what the Skrulls did while they were gone.





	More Than Skin Deep

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [До самой сути](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13582248) by [MouseGemini](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MouseGemini/pseuds/MouseGemini)



> This is a fluffy Skrull story. Yes, really.
> 
> For Cap-IM Bingo, the square is "Skrulls!" Thanks to Kiyaar, Magicasen, and Sheron for beta, to Shu for the title, and to Akatonbo for the original idea.
> 
> Translation [into Chinese](http://yizhiajiu401.lofter.com/post/1f1fe61b_1211e4b0) by madeline-stony.

"You really didn't notice anything wrong?" Steve asked, for the third time that evening, like the answer was going to be different this time.

To be honest, Tony was still hoping for a different answer, too.

But Jan looked at Ororo, and Ororo looked at Bruce, and Bruce looked at Peter, and Peter looked at Logan, and then Logan looked back at Jan, and Jan, finally shook her head once again. 

_Hell of a welcome-home party_ , Tony thought. He pushed his half-eaten slice of pizza away from him on the coffee table. He wasn't hungry anymore. He hadn't really been very hungry to begin with. Even Steve, sitting next to him, looked out-of-sorts. Well, he still looked gorgeous, because he was Steve, but -- yeah, Tony just wasn't going to let his thoughts go there. Steve didn't want him.

Besides, Tony was pretty sure there was some kind of etiquette about hitting on your best friend after you'd both just been captured by aliens for three months.

"We really thought they were you," Jan said, biting her lip, eyes downcast. "I'm so sorry."

Three months ago, it had been a perfectly ordinary Thursday morning, and he and Steve had been on a perfectly ordinary run through Central Park, and then extremely out-of-the-ordinary shapeshifting lizard-faced aliens had kidnapped them and taken them to their orbiting spaceship.

They called themselves Skrulls, the lizard woman in charge had said, and she'd been only too happy to expound upon their plans for world domination. The Skrulls did a weird ritual around them, him and Steve, and then informed them that they were reading their thoughts and their memories -- that even now, Skrulls were being transformed into them. Sleeper agents. They would think they were Iron Man and Captain America. They would _be_ Iron Man and Captain America. No one would know the difference. And then, soon after that, they would know themselves for Skrulls, and they would take over the world.

Captivity in the hold of the Skrull ship hadn't been all that bad, Tony supposed, as captivity went. _Put them in stasis_ , the woman had ordered, and Tony had really only had a good thirty seconds to spend pondering what horrors the Skrulls would inflict upon their unsuspecting teammates and then the rest of the world, as the stasis pod door dropped down over his head--

\--and then he'd been awake, and Ororo had been floating there next to the sparking control panel, and Peter had webbed the Skrull guards in the doorway, and Logan had been saying _come on, bub, we gotta go, relax, we already got Cap, he's safe_ \--

And now they were here. Home. Safe. Both of them.

Their duplicates had gone, disappearing somewhere together at the beginning of what Tony had gathered had been meant to be a Skrull invasion. Other Skrulls had shown up, and that was when the team had figured it out, and gone to rescue them, and fought back the rest of the Skrulls. The world was safe now, at least.

But Skrulls had spent three entire months pretending to be him and Steve, and somehow no one had noticed.

Tony was trying not to take it personally. Sure, okay, it was good that their Skrull impostors hadn't actually harmed anyone, as far he could tell -- he was glad of that. But it hurt, really, to think that a bunch of good-for-nothing aliens could pretend to be them and no one had even noticed. The Avengers were their friends. They shouldn't have been fooled.

"Come on," Tony said, "there had to be something, right? Something that was a little off?"

Jan shook her head again. "They were... really convincing."

There was an odd look in her eyes, though, when she spoke, and she wasn't quite meeting Tony's gaze. Even worse, she wasn't meeting Steve's gaze, and that right there was a dead giveaway -- you couldn't look Captain America in the eye and lie to him. Tony thought it was probably some kind of secret undocumented superpower. A side effect of the serum. Or maybe that was just Steve.

But that meant that the Skrulls had done something. Maybe the team hadn't realized it until afterwards, but there was something they weren't telling them. And Tony knew he and Steve deserved to know. They needed to know. What had the Skrulls done in their names?

Tony glanced over at Steve; Steve's lips thinned, he met Tony's gaze grimly, and Tony knew without saying it that they were having the exact same thought.

Steve set his half-drunk soda down on the coffee table with a clunk. The sound was decisive.

"All right," Steve said, in the voice he used when he was calling a team meeting to order. "There's clearly something else going on here. I can tell none of you want to say it, but there's obviously something, and I want to know what it is."

Once again, Tony looked at Jan, and he watched the chain of wordless, panicked sidelong looks pass around the room in the same order as before -- Jan to Ororo to Bruce to Peter to Logan.

It was a conspiracy, Tony saw now. They were definitely covering for something. Whatever it was, they all knew it.

Tony's gaze -- and Steve's -- came to rest on Logan, and Logan just scowled back.

"I ain't getting paid enough to deal with this," Logan said, and he grabbed his beer, pushed himself upright, and wandered out of the room.

So much for that.

Tony looked hopefully over at Peter, the previous link in the chain.

"I, uh," Peter said, and even with his mask pulled down, Tony could see him swallowing hard. "Uh. I just remembered I have to-- uh. It's my bedtime. Bye."

He shot a web line toward the open doorway, swung out of his seat, and was gone.

That left Jan, Ororo, and Bruce. The three of them glanced guiltily at each other.

Were they for real? What the hell was going on here?

Steve stared expectantly.

No one said anything.

Sighing a loud and disappointed sigh, Steve rose to his feet. "Right," Steve said. He was clearly working very hard to unclench his jaw. "Okay. Fine. You're not going to tell me. I guess that's how it is." He gave their wayward teammates one final baleful glare -- Tony would have been impressed at their ability to resist it if he hadn't been just as annoyed as Steve was -- and then started to edge out around the table to get to the door. "You know what? Bed sounds like a great idea. I can't see as we've got anything else to talk about. So I'm just going to turn in for the night--"

"Wait!"

Jan leaped to her feet. She was holding out her hands like she could keep Steve from moving -- which she couldn't, at her current size, but she sure looked like she was considering going giant. She was wide-eyed, and her face was pale.

Steve stopped. "Yes, Jan?"

"You can't go to bed," Jan blurted out, which as an explanation of the team's weirdness made _absolutely no sense_ , but Ororo and Bruce looked guiltier, so this had to be part of it. Somehow.

Tony watched Steve blink in incomprehension. His handsome face wrinkled and twisted as he pondered this. "I can't go to _bed_?"

"You can't go to bed," Bruce echoed. It didn't make any more sense this time.

Steve's chest rose and fell as he breathed. He was probably trying to stay calm. His cheeks were flushed. "And why, pray tell," Steve asked, "can't I go to bed?" His voice was even, each word precisely articulated, the way he got when he was very, very angry. 

Tony didn't think he'd ever heard Steve talk like that to someone who wasn't a supervillain before, but, for God's sake, couldn't the team figure out what it felt like to be them? Couldn't they tell how horrible it was, knowing that the Skrulls had done something, but not knowing what?

Bruce looked at Jan. Jan looked at Ororo.

"Please," Tony said, desperately, in the hope that one last appeal would tip the scales. "Please just tell us what happened."

Ororo drew herself up. She was less graceful than usual; her normal serene dignity was absent. But she looked Steve in the eye. "You... moved," she said.

"You-- he-- the Skrulls turned your old bedroom into an office," Bruce added. "It's all books and papers and computers there now. That's why you can't sleep there. There's no bed."

Steve's mouth was parted in disbelief. He licked his lips. It took him a few seconds to come up with words. "The Skrull who was pretending to be me _moved out_ , and that didn't strike any of you as suspicious?"

Tony was with Steve on this. As far as Tony knew, Steve loved the Avengers, and Steve loved living in the tower with the Avengers, and Steve had never given him any reason to think otherwise. Steve had had the room next to Tony's since the day he'd joined the team, and to judge by the poleaxed look on his face, he clearly couldn't believe his Skrull counterpart had moved out, either. He would have wanted to stay. And surely the team would have known that. Tony had known it. Everyone else should have too.

Jan took a deep, shaking breath and straightened up, like she was bracing for a catastrophe. "Well," Jan said, in the smallest voice Tony had ever heard from her, "he didn't move _out_ , exactly."

* * *

Tony's bedroom wasn't the way he'd left it.

The comforter on his bed was striped blue and white; he thought he remembered seeing it in Steve's room once. There was a second nightstand on the near side of the bed. One of Steve's Edgar Rice Burroughs novels sat atop it, a folded piece of paper stuck halfway in to mark the reader's place. On the far side of the bed, on the original nightstand, there was an engineering journal and a framed photograph. Tony couldn't quite make it out at this angle, but there were broad swathes of red-gold and red, white and blue that left Tony with a fairly good idea of who must have been in the picture.

The bathroom door was open. There was a second set of towels on the rack, a second robe hanging on the wall. There were two toothbrushes in the holder. A bottle of Steve's favorite brand of aftershave was on the counter, as well as the hard-sided case that Tony knew contained Steve's straight razor, the one he liked to use when he had the time to spare on a really good shave. The closet door was open too, and Tony could see that most of his clothing had been shoved halfway over, and half the closet was now filled with t-shirts, workout gear, and -- most damning of all -- one of Steve's uniforms. Blue scale-mail glittered in the light.

The Skrulls hadn't moved out. They'd moved in. Together.

Tony could only tell Steve was still standing behind him because he could hear Steve breathing. Steve hadn't said anything since Jan had led them here and told them the truth, because what in the world did you say to that?

The shapeshifting aliens pretending to be them had fallen in love.

"They were a very cute couple," Jan said, weakly, also from somewhere behind him. She was probably still in the hallway. "We were-- we were all so happy for you. For them, I guess."

"When?" Tony heard himself say. "When-- how-- how long--?"

He turned back. Steve was still standing in the doorway, mouth hanging open. Behind him was Jan, head down, miserable.

"They moved in together about two months ago." Jan's voice was strained. "As far as we know, they got together a couple weeks before that. That was when they told the rest of us they were dating, anyway."

Without him really intending to move, Tony's feet carried him across the room, to the other side of the bed, to the framed photograph. He picked it up. It was a photo of him and Steve -- he was in his armor, minus the helmet, and Steve was in uniform next to him. They were sitting on the couch in the common room, the same couch they'd just been sitting on. Steve's arm was thrown over his shoulder. Steve was all over him; Steve was halfway in his lap. Steve's head was turned, and he was kissing Tony on the cheek. Tony was beaming, practically delirious with happiness.

It was a beautiful picture. It was what Tony had dreamed about for years. It had never happened. Not to them.

"Peter took that," Jan volunteered. "You-- he-- the Skrull version of you asked for a copy."

Tony held up the picture so Steve could see it. Steve's jaw twitched, and his face went a little grayer. His throat worked. He didn't say anything.

Jan glanced back and forth between the two of them. "I'll just go," she said, her voice far too high, and then she darted down the hall.

They were alone.

Tony cleared his throat. He had no idea what to say.

"You can come in, if you want?" he offered.

"Well," Steve said, with a faint smile, "it's not like I've got anywhere else to go. All my things are in here, aren't they?"

"I suppose so," Tony agreed. There was no getting out of this, then.

Steve stepped in, shutting the door behind him. In another few steps, he was at Tony's side, peering over his shoulder at the picture. He was so close. Tony shivered. He was so close, and Tony couldn't do anything about it. It wasn't like he'd been planning to make a move -- because after all, why bother when Steve didn't want him? -- but he'd always had it in mind that he could, a fantasy to sustain him on lonely nights. But now he couldn't, because some lousy aliens had gotten there first.

"They look so happy," Steve murmured, and then he paused. "Do you-- do you think they knew they were Skrulls, when they fell in love? Or do you think they thought they were us?"

It was just like Steve, Tony thought, to assume it was all real, to think the best even of conquering lizard aliens. It probably would never occur to Steve that it might have all been fake.

"I don't know," Tony said, helplessly. "They knew who they were by the end. We know that. I don't know how long they thought they were us."

Steve glanced up and around the room. "They've certainly made it... cozy."

It would almost have been sweet if they hadn't been evil aliens bent on destruction. As it was, someone had been playing games with their lives, and, God, now Steve knew how he felt, in the worst way possible. He'd never had a choice. And, even worse, Steve didn't like him like that. He couldn't. Obviously the Skrulls had made a mistake; obviously Steve-the-Skrull had been pretending to be in love. Faking it. Or broken, even, made weak, made to lower himself, to be able to love Tony. The real Steve would never have done that. Something about him was unique, unable to be counterfeited, the same way the serum had never worked on anyone but him.

And now they were stuck like this, with all Tony's secrets revealed.

He wanted to run, to hide, but there was no getting away. This was his life now.

Steve touched him gently on the arm, and Tony barely suppressed a flinch. Steve had always touched him, but it meant something rather more, now. Something they couldn't have.

"Tony?" Steve's eyes were wide and earnest, his voice low and soothing. "You holding up okay? You don't look so good."

"Fine," Tony said, too quickly. "Absolutely fine. You?"

He wondered how it had happened, with the Skrulls. If the two of them had looked at each other one day after a mission and just taken one last step closer. Which of them had been the first to say it. When they had kissed. If the Skrull version of Steve had kissed him first. If they had gone on a date. Where they had gone on a date. If the world knew. God, did the world know? That right there was another thing to worry about. Clearing this giant misunderstanding up was going to be hell, and the worst part was that they hadn't even been wrong. Not that Tony could ever tell Steve that.

Steve sighed, a soft sound. "The thing I can't get over is this," he began, slow and contemplative, like he was just voicing idle musings aloud. "The thing that keeps going through my mind is, well, you've got these aliens. And they have our memories. And they have our thoughts. And their goal on this planet is to be us, as convincingly as possible. And they look at each other, and they think that the best thing to do, the most logical thing to do, the most foolproof way to be us... is to fall in love. Whether or not they knew they were aliens, that was what they decided to do, to be us. Fall in love."

There was no hiding that. Tony swallowed hard. "Yeah."

And Steve looked up, and he met Tony's eyes, and he smiled, a small gentle smile, like he knew how scared Tony was. "So I guess what I'm wondering," Steve said, very carefully, "is if there's anything you want to tell me."

Oh, God. He knew.

Of course he knew. It was all right here.

"Uh," Tony said, desperately. "Well. I, uh. I mean, they sure made a mistake with you, didn't they?"

Steve squinted. "What?"

"You know," Tony said. "Because you obviously don't feel like that about me. Imperfect copy. They clearly messed something up."

For several seconds, Steve just stared at him, his face clouding more and more with bewilderment, the world's worst oncoming storm.

"Why in the world would you think that?" Steve blurted out. "Tony, I-- for God's sake, an alien who knew _exactly how I feel about you_ has been sharing your alien counterpart's bed for two months and you think I-- you think I don't really feel that way? You think it's a mistake?"

It couldn't be true. Could it?

"You really like me?"

"It's a lot more than liking," Steve said, and that was when Steve kissed him.

* * *

After half an hour of what Tony was willing to call the number-one makeout session of his life -- he and Steve clearly had a lot to look forward to in the future -- Tony finally, regretfully let Steve go, to get up and get himself a glass of water. Steve's hair was delightfully messy, even if the hickeys Tony had left on his throat were already beginning to fade.

Steve wiggled out from under him, rolled to the side of the bed -- and then stopped and stared at the book that Steve's Skrull counterpart had left on the nightstand.

"What's the matter?" Tony asked.

Steve frowned. "The bookmark," he said. "I think it's a--"

As Tony watched, Steve picked up the book and shook it, to find that the Skrull who had been reading it had been marking his place with... a letter? The paper slid into Steve's hand, and he unfolded it. The handwriting looked like Steve's, but Tony knew from the look on Steve's face that Steve hadn't written it.

" _Dear Steve and Tony_ ," Steve read, " _We want to thank you for the joy you have brought to our lives. We were sent to destroy your planet, but the time we spent as you, experiencing the love that you feel for each other, has shown us that conquest is not the answer. This is why we've decided to run away together, and sabotage the Skrull Empire's invasion as much as we can on our way off-planet. We plan to seek asylum on Xandar. We plan to marry. By the time you read this, we should be on our honeymoon. We hope that you two can make each other as happy as we did. Love, T'fktkt and K'tkkst, formerly of the Skrull Expeditionary Force._ "

There was a heart at the bottom.

"Well," Tony said. "Ain't that sweet."

"We should send them a card," Steve said. "I bet Thor can help us find them."

"We should," Tony agreed.

He could never have imagined he'd be grateful to the Skrulls for anything, but they'd given him this. They'd given him Steve. Tony rolled back over onto the empty bed and grinned stupidly at the ceiling, as Steve filled a water glass from the bathroom sink.

"I just want one thing, though," Steve said, sounding a little uncertain. "I mean, it's silly, but--"

"Anything," Tony said, instantly.

"I want a brand-new toothbrush," Steve said. "My very own toothbrush that a Skrull has not used before me."

That sounded like a great idea.

"Sure," Tony said. smiling, "I can do that."

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr post](http://sineala.tumblr.com/post/169799997859/fic-more-than-skin-deep)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] More Than Skin Deep](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15520662) by [AudioSilks (WhenasInSilks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhenasInSilks/pseuds/AudioSilks)




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